Firms hire on “attitude” over skills

Employers prioritise job applicants with the right attitude to work rather than the skills listed on their CVs, new research shows. With school leavers facing rocketing higher education fees, recruitment group Reed polled over 1,000 business owners to see what key traits employers look for in job seekers. It discovered that 96pc of employers would hire someone who did not have a complete set of skills but displayed the right attitude over an applicant with the perfect skills but who lacked the right mindset. Two thirds of employers said they if had to reduce their workforce they would fire someone with a perfect skills set over someone with deficient skills but sporting the right attitude. The employers ranked the top six “essential” attitude qualities as “commitment, honesty, trustworthiness, adaptability, accountability, and loyalty.”

About Steve Young

Steve Young is the Managing Partner of Downtown Recruitment who are based in Thame, Oxfordshire. Downtown Recruitment provide a wide variety of temporary and permanent staff to the local area covering a wide range of disciplines across the commercial and industrial sectors. View Downtown Recruitment's main website